Friday, January 09, 2015

Sci-jacking



I love it when we get a new word to describe an annoying behavior that has existed for a long time without a name. For example, I loved it when "sealioning" became the term for persistent, annoying demands that people defend their opinions with evidence.

For a long time I've been annoyed by the practice of political movements trying to co-opt branches of science for their own ends. This is less common in the physical sciences, because they rarely have policy implications (though you do see plenty of politics-based science denialism, which is a different thing). In social science, you have lots of implications for policy, and so you get a lot more political movements trying to hijack branches of social science.

Let's call this practice "sci-jacking." (I like this term for a number of reasons.)

One good example of sci-jacking is the field of anthropology, which, as far as I can tell, was long ago eaten up by leftist activism. Sociology seems to have fallen prey to a bit of this as well, though less than anthro.

Economics, of course, is a prime target for sci-jackers. It deals with money, and money is what most people want out of policy. It is more directly connected to policy than anthropology or even sociology.

There are some people who try to sci-jack econ for leftist ends. They are mostly laughable, and they don't have any success, as far as I can see. Econ - especially pop econ - has swung a lot to the left in the last couple of decades, but as far as I can tell that movement came entirely from within, not from any external movement. Left-leaning economists utterly avoid the quasi-Marxist thinking and language and activist ritual that is endemic to anthropology. 

A much more serious attempt at sci-jacking economics comes from the right. This is natural, since the right wants free markets (well, in most ways), and econ treats free markets as natural outcomes. Just as an ecologist would assume that an ecosystem is working fine unless there were something obviously going wrong, economists tend to assume that markets are working OK unless there is obviously something the matter. The basic results in economic theory that say that "markets are good," although expressed in terms of voluntary exchange, utility maximization, etc., are really just formalizations of this naturalistic assumption. 

That makes econ very attractive to rightists - at least, rightists of the libertarian, free-market kind, if not always the traditional-values crowd. A whole movement of quasi-economists emerged after World War 2, whose main purpose seems to be conflating economic science with right-wing politics. In other words, there has been a sustained attempt to sci-jack econ from the right.

If you don't believe me, read the Wikipedia article on the Mont Pelerin society:
In 1947, 36 scholars, mostly economists, with some historians and philosophers, were invited by Professor Friedrich Hayek to meet to discuss the state, and possible fate of classical liberalism. He wanted to discuss how to combat the “state ascendancy and Marxist or Keynesian planning [that was] sweeping the globe”...The Mont Pelerin Society aimed to “facilitate an exchange of ideas between like-minded scholars in the hope of strengthening the principles and practice of a free society and to study the workings, virtues, and defects of market-oriented economic systems.”... 
The society has become part of an international think-tank movement; Hayek used it as a forum to encourage members such as Antony Fisher to pursue the think-tank route. Fisher has established the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in London during 1955, the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., in 1973; the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research in New York City in 1977; and the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in 1981. The Atlas Foundation supports a wide network of think-tanks, including the Fraser Institute.
I especially love this little gem at the end:
In 2006, libertarian theorist and Austrian School economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe founded The Property and Freedom Society as a reaction against what he perceived to be the Mont Pelerin Society's drift towards "socialism." Hoppe stated that individuals, whom he did not identify, had been "skeptical concerning the Mont Pelerin Society from the beginning" in 1947. He said that Ludwig von Mises had doubted as to whether "a society filled with certified state-interventionists" could pursue libertarian ideals.
The only appropriate response to this is: "Heh." 

As you might have realized by now, a big chunk of this movement - though not all of it, by any means - goes by the name of "the Austrian School". The "Austrian School" is mostly made up of quasi-economists, who reject the techniques of mainstream econ. They especially reject math and empiricism - naturally, because those techniques might at some point lead to a conclusion that does not fit with their political goals. They instead embrace something they call "praxeology," which is a complex system of language whose entire purpose and function is to disguise the fact that it has absolutely no substantive content. It is very reminiscent of the Derrida-based "critical theory" common in literature departments. 

Austrians (I'm going to drop the quotes, with all apologies to people from the very lovely country of Austria) claim to follow in the footsteps of their great thinkers, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Carl Menger. In fact, all the good ideas (and some of the bad ideas) of those thinkers have already been incorporated into mainstream economics. The Austrian "school" is no longer a school.

Now, there are some self-described Austrians who do not perfectly fit the description above - they have partially embraced the methods of mainstream economics. But this seems like saying that because not all self-described communists believe in pure orthodox Marxism, communism is no longer to be identified with Marxism. "Austrians for mainstream economic methods" sounds to me a little bit like "Jews for Jesus."

Actually this post began as a response to a blog post by Peter Boettke (one of the aforementioned Austrians who deviates from the pure praxeological orthodoxy). I had argued in a Bloomberg View post that economics - especially pop econ - is shifting to the political left.  Boettke says no, actually, econ has always leaned to the left. To not lean to the left, of course, you have to be an Austrian or equivalent free-market activist. This is a natural thing for Boettke to argue, since political movements always like to portray themselves as rebels. 

So the post doesn't really need much of a response. (Though I thought it was funny that Boettke cited Elinor Ostrom, who studied institutions and collective management of the commons, and Vernon Smith, who did the original Bubble Experiments, as "more market oriented thinkers". Just had to get that dig in there.)

The broader point is that the effort to sci-jack econ for conservative purposes is losing force, losing momentum, losing energy, and possibly losing other physics quantities as well. When you have Krugman and Piketty and Sachs and Stiglitz as the face of the profession instead of Friedman and Hayek and Art Laffer, the winds have shifted. Boettke's argument - basically, "even the conservatives were never conservative enough for my tastes" - doesn't change that fact.

But an even broader point is that econ has always resisted being sci-jacked. Studies find that political bias exists, but is small in size. If you've spent much time in an econ department, you know this - economists generally bend over backward to avoid the appearance of politicization. It's impossible, of course, to completely expunge politics from one's opinions and priors and basic beliefs, but economists, in the main, seem to have done an admirable job of staying as politically neutral as humanly possible. Even Milton Friedman, who was a member of the Mont Pelerin society and the most prominent conservative activist in the profession, made an attempt to separate his assessment of the facts from his own opinions and desires. And the "leftward shift" I talked about in my BV article has been more pronounced in the public sphere - in academia, the shift has been only minor and muted, because any earlier rightward tilt was also only minor and muted.

In other words, econ was never in danger of falling prey to sci-jackers, the way anthropology has. The sci-jackers made a lot of noise and established a lot of think tanks and coined a lot of buzzwords, but their assault broke on the walls of academic objectivity. I think econ deserves a lot of credit for that fact.


Update: Chris Dillow has a good complimentary piece on why econ doesn't need "heterodox" methods to arrive at liberal policy conclusions. Econ's relatively strong resistance to political sci-jacking is not inconsistent with its recent leftward turn.

79 comments:

  1. One good example of sci-jacking is the field of anthropology, which, as far as I can tell, was long ago eaten up by leftist activism. Sociology seems to have fallen prey to a bit of this as well, though less than anthro.
    ------

    Is this really noah or an impostor?

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  2. Anonymous4:53 PM

    Off-topic, so ignore if you want...
    but in your BV article on KFV - isn't this just Adam Smith and Allyn Young's work in another guise ?
    In other words, you have rediscovered that the division of labor (or formation and dissolution of networks if you want to be all modernist) is one theory to rule them all.

    Friend of Adam

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  3. I find this post . . . incredibly wrong in certain respects.

    The dig at anthro is founded on a bunch of them participating in a demonstration, as if this had some substantive, pejorative implication for the work they do. Even if the politics tend to trend left, that is no necessary reflection on the work either.

    The quickie bit about left-leaning economists is bereft of any knowledge of left economists, unless one's universe is confined to Stiglitz/Krugman/Sachs. (The latter is extra-problematic in this regard, since he has advocated a revolutionary middle, whatever this is.)

    I'll pass on the Austrian part, which looks mostly on-target, though I bet those identifying as Austrians would reject their purported incorporation into the mainstream. And quite a few others would blink at the description of the "New Classicals" as mainstream.

    I'd be interested to know what left critiques of neo-classical econ, Samuelson-Keynesian included, our intrepid blogger has looked at, if any. And his considered reactions, if any. The Galbraiths? Lance Taylor? Phil Mirowski? Bob Pollin?

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    1. The dig at anthro is founded on a bunch of them participating in a demonstration, as if this had some substantive, pejorative implication for the work they do. Even if the politics tend to trend left, that is no necessary reflection on the work either.

      Did you see the links to the "activist anthropology" programs?

      I'd be interested to know what left critiques of neo-classical econ

      This conflation of methodology with position on the ideological spectrum is exactly the kind of thing that would-be sci-jackers want.

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    2. "Did you see the links to the "activist anthropology" programs?"

      If we use the standard of 'activist X' to decide whether or not a field X is political, then economics would lead the pack.

      The difference is that they publish op-eds (many disguised as analyses), rather than march in the streets.

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  4. 1) No. Who cares. I don't think it is reasonable to assume their work is no good. Suppose I decided a water pump was the source of a cholera epidemic, and this prompted me to do research and advocacy in that vein. Would that be "sci-jacking"?

    2) The premise that methodology is above ideology, in economics, is precisely the historic defense of the mainstream against criticism. It's been written about for decades.

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  5. No. Who cares.

    Gotcha.

    The premise that methodology is above ideology, in economics, is precisely the historic defense of the mainstream against criticism. It's been written about for decades.

    So you're saying you like sci-jacking, if it's by the right bunch of people. That's cool, dawg, I like Ben & Jerry's.

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    1. But damn, I'm just really annoyed by the idea that we've got to use This Method over That Method, because if we use That Method we won't help The Poors as much, or whatever. First of all it's not even right. Second of all I think society needs a bunch of smart people who just concentrate on figuring out what is going on, as best they can, without worrying about what to do about it all. I think that having that bunch of people has served us well in the past and will continue to serve us well in the future, and that replacing it with a bunch of political activists who see every positive result through a normative lens would represent humanity shooting itself in the foot.

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    2. 1) That's kind of narrow. We should be interested in a Method that advances the human race. People will disagree on what it is, but that's what discussion should entertain.
      2) Agree with "Second . . . "
      3) I don't think we've ever had 'that bunch.' The work always has an ideological context, sometimes crippling, sometimes illuminating, sometimes inconsequential. As to how well we are served, that depends partly on who 'we' are.
      4) Straw man. That would just be bad economics. Not my cup of tea, or flavor of ice cream.

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    3. I think that if we don't try to separate our assessment of reality from our desires about what to do about that reality, we don't do ourselves any favors. We make big mistakes.

      What if Method 1, which we initially chose because it was our best guess as to how reality works, says that some program - say, inner-city housing projects - doesn't actually help the poor. But since we really really want to help the poor, and since in the past we tried inner-city housing projects with the intent to help the poor, we say "Screw Method 1, let's go with Method 2, which says inner-city housing projects DO help the poor!" But Method 2, because we chose it based on ideology, is likely to give us wrong answers...so in the end we end up hurting the poor instead of helping them.

      That's a bad outcome. But it's a bad outcome that couldn't be predicted in advance, except with my guiding principle - you choose the method that best describes objective reality, and THEN you decide what to do. Drop that principle, and you open yourself to all kinds of trouble.

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    4. Anonymous12:01 AM

      *I think that if we don't try to separate our assessment of reality from our desires about what to do about that reality, we don't do ourselves any favors. We make big mistakes.*

      I do agree with you to a large extent, but that means we need *both*, and we need honesty. There is a widespread tendency to peddle ones beliefs in the guise of objectivity. I know I see many supposedly "conservative" economists out there, and they have a tendency to reveal their true beliefs in the guise of analysis and policy recommendations, which show them to be a heck of a lot more libertarian than conservative.

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  6. 1) Gotcha nothing. You can't defend a summary condemnation of work you don't even talk about.

    2) You're pretending, absent any support, that sci-jacking has not already occurred. The underlying ideology may be congenial to you, like a fish that doesn't know what water is. That doesn't mean, by the way, that I think no useful work is done under current circumstances, or that it couldn't be done under a different ideological/methodological regime. I'd just say you are taking a superficial view of methodology.

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    1. See my comment above. The idea that all methodology is inherently political is candy-coated pretty-looking bullshit.

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    2. I'll leave you the last word. It's your house. These little boxes can't contain an exploration of that, and I'm not the best person to prosecute my side of the (very old) argument. I still have to wonder how much you have delved into the critical lit. They certainly don't push it on us in grad school.

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  7. > But an even broader point is that econ has always resisted being sci-jacked. Studies find that political bias exists, but is small in size. If you've spent much time in an econ department, you know this - economists generally bend over backward to avoid the appearance of politicization.

    Isn't the existence of these swings an indication that we are not talking about politically disinterested research programs? Are you saying that these programs just happened to result in a majority of conservative conclusions in Friedman's time? And that more of these conservative conclusions just happened to arise more commonly at U Chicago than at Princeton? Similarly, is it a coincidence that the leftward shift has really taken hold after the financial crisis?

    Shouldn't you at least *consider* the possibility that you are too close to the field and its mood swings to be objective about this? Rather than only bragging about the time you've spent in econ departments?

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    1. Isn't the existence of these swings an indication that we are not talking about politically disinterested research programs?

      I'm saying people are human, and politics ALWAYS manages to exert some influence over people's thinking. Mainstream economics has resisted politics a lot better than one might expect, but that doesn't mean it resisted completely.

      Are you saying that these programs just happened to result in a majority of conservative conclusions in Friedman's time? And that more of these conservative conclusions just happened to arise more commonly at U Chicago than at Princeton? Similarly, is it a coincidence that the leftward shift has really taken hold after the financial crisis?

      I think there are at least two causes of those swings:

      1. People coming to different conclusions based on different recent events.

      2. The influence of political movements from outside the field.

      I think both have had an effect, but I think (1) is stronger in econ relative to (2). (2) still exists to some degree, but less than I would have thought before I spent a bunch of time around economists.

      Does that make sense?

      Shouldn't you at least *consider* the possibility that you are too close to the field and its mood swings to be objective about this?

      Sure. That's possible. No one is completely objective, I'm not a godlike dispenser of truth.

      Rather than only bragging about the time you've spent in econ departments?

      Haha, it ain't bragging. A lot of that time was wasted...

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  8. Anonymous9:30 PM

    This is worse than you drivel on politics or the garbage on Chinese bear-dogs. This is not intellectual. Not informative. Not funny. You had a few intriguing posts in the past, but it seems those were the outliers.

    So, bye-bye. I'll leave it to you and your sock puppets to ratchet up the site hits. Meanwhile, maybe you should take a lesson from Farmer or Lewis or DeLong or many others as how to be interesting, or intriguing, or {fill int he blanks with something positive}.

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    1. Noooooooooo, come back!! Don't leave meeeeeeeeee

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    2. Don't worry Noah Smith, Ray Lopez, troll, is here to save your declining readership!

      You are so right NS. Economics is not called "Political Economy" for nothing. It's politics masquerading as a dismal science, at least, as you say, in the public sphere.

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    3. *hugs Ray and cries on shoulder*

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  9. Piketty seems to be all about quasi-Marxist thinking...

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  10. Anonymous12:44 AM

    Let's try to make sense of Noah:

    "What the protesters want has nothing to do with methodology -- they want economics to lean more to the left.
    "But if the protesters bothered to look around, they would see that their wish has been coming true for decades."
    http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-01-07/economics-stars-swing-left

    So the protesters are wrong, because "econ" is already left. Fine.

    But, then

    "So overall, I think my thesis that most of econ doesn't line up along left-right political lines seems like it's borne out by the data."

    So, "econ" is unbiased (it is also lefty).

    Boetke ("Boettke says no, actually, econ has always leaned to the left") is wrong saying that "econ" is lefty, because in fact, it is unbiased.

    With Noah, maybe physics lost a great physicist; unfortunately, physics' loss didn't result in econ's gain.

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    1. Anonymous12:45 AM

      "So overall, I think my thesis that most of econ doesn't line up along left-right political lines seems like it's borne out by the data."

      Comes from here:

      http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/economists-arent-that-ideological.html

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    2. What I basically think is:

      1. Econ is to SOME degree influenced by outside political movements - how could any field not be? - but this influence is a lot smaller than most people think.

      2. Academic econ has been shifting a bit to the "left", as a result of A) new methods, and B) external events. But NOT because of pressure from external political movements.

      3. Pop econ has shifted more substantially to the left than academia (and earlier shifted more substantially to the right), mainly in response to external events rather than the influence of political movements.

      Does that clear things up a bit?

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    3. Anonymous8:40 PM

      There is a simpler explanation: you want your economic tribe to be seen as both "left" by the protesters and as "unbiased", by the decision-makers. No different to what any other politician does.

      By Occam's razor, my explanation is better.

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    4. Oh. I see. Well, actually, this is all a simulation being run by a capricious God, and you're the only sentient being other than God, and I'm just an NPC in the simulation, so actually nothing I do has any motive other than God fucking with you.

      By Occam's razor, my explanation is better.

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    5. Named3:26 AM

      Simulations are simulating something, necessarily simulations require an original to copy. Therefore your explanation requires an extra step to explain that guy's existence, even if his point is facetious and untrue. I suppose when you introduced God into the explanation it was really a moot point to bring up anybody's razor.

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  11. When talking about political hi-jacking of econ, you need to separate macro from other kinds of economics. Your claim that most economists try hard to be seen as politically disinterested may be true outside macro, but macro always has been thoroughly politicized and broken into political camps.

    That politicization is so old and so deeply ingrained in macro that it's impossible to say who hijacked what. Ludwig von Mises after all was an economist, so if he came to the conclusion from studying the field that the road to heaven was through not interfering with markets, who's to say that he was hijacking the field by promoting that view? I'm sure he felt he was defending legitimate economic science from leftist hijackers. The Austrian econ aversion to empirical data is I think indefensible, but hardly unique in the history of social sciences. Founding and funding think tanks is something one does to influence politics, not to influence academia.

    There is an emerging empirical branch of macro that is relatively less political, though still controversial enough for leftist econ professors at UMass to try and skewer R&R.

    Macro is simply a) the kind of econ closest to politics and b) the kind of econ with the least certainty and thus the most room for politicized position-taking.

    There was no macroecon Eden that was hijacked by outsiders. Macro has always been like this.

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    1. I think you're probably right. But also remember that macro is more influenced by recent events (inflation in the 70s, depression in the 30s and 2010s), because the time series involved are so short. That may look like politics, but really it's just a data problem plus a behavioral bias.

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    2. I think general life experience shapes political and economic ideology a lot more powerfully than accidentally relying on overly recent data. Economists lived with '70s inflation, they didn't only get to know it from studying the most recent data series.

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  12. Anonymous4:17 AM

    This is hilarious. Econ is somehow immune from the politics that supports and uses it for political gain? I bet all those dead guys in Chile were at least satisfied that Friedman wasn't politically influenced when he consulted on the post coup economic reorganization into a neoliberal colonial vassal state. Stalin no doubt had a team of objective apolitical economists at his disposal. Knowing that the other guys considered their economic programs as being Henry Gordian unannounced by right or left perspectives was no doubt one of few positive assurances one could derive from their closely linked political and social programs

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    1. It's obviously not *immune*, just more resistant than many people think.

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    2. Anonymous5:29 AM

      " econ treats free markets as natural outcomes". There's a candidate for economics already having been science-jacked. This is like a physicist in 1910 declaring that, despite the absence of evidence and reason (per Einstein) to believe otherwise, ether exists -- for how can we explain the transmission of light otherwise?

      "The people spouting politicized bullshit into the receptive ears of politicians are, in general, not economists." Is Greg Mankiw an economist?

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  13. Noah, I think this requires further examination: "econ treats free markets as natural outcomes. Just as an ecologist would assume that an ecosystem is working fine unless there were something obviously going wrong, economists tend to assume that markets are working OK unless there is obviously something the matter. The basic results in economic theory that say that "markets are good," although expressed in terms of voluntary exchange, utility maximization, etc., are really just formalizations of this naturalistic assumption. "

    1. Ecologists observe that wolves enter an ecosystem, then eat all the deer and the deer population crashes, and then the wolf population crashes because they have overpreyed and have nothing more to eat. --Do ecologists say everything is working fine, or do they say something is obviously going wrong?

    2. Take another example, with a more salubrious and salutary final outcome: Let's hypothesize that secular stagnation and increasing inequality are merely a passing historical stage on the way to a perfectly automated future where nobody has to work (and the few owners who remain, just prior to that, are expropriated, or their dynasties discombobulate) --Is the market system PRESENTLY working OK, or is there something obviously the matter, and we need to treat secular stagnation and increasing income and wealth inequalities? And which part of your response to this question is normative, and which part is positive?

    3. Let's take a slightly different tack: Human beings did not think of themselves as having individual "self-interest" before the modern period (say the 16th-17th century): before that you were submerged in the body of God, and you had no other thoughts than to happily maintain your place. The new idea, that ANY individual might ascend by personal merit in a material hierarchy, only emerged into public consciousness in around the third quarter of the 18th century (the story is in Lovejoy's Great Chain of Being). --Are self-interest, voluntary exchange, utility maximization, etc, all "naturalistic" assumptions? How would experimental economics distinguish the extent to which altruism has been shunted aside by the belief that markets are naturalistic?

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    1. @L.A.A. - re 1), that's a population crash in a predator-prey relationship, as Martin Braun's textbook shows is just a series of differential equations. Nothing unusual, happens in nature. Re 2) there's no way you can tell if today's bad trend will continue or not, in economics see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_equilibrium_theory Re 3) I think you are confusing what is written and what is actually done. Animals even obey the 'laws' of economics, but scholastic medieval scribes writing for rulers or the Church are not going to emphasize that 'Greed is Good'. Do as I do, not as I say might be the motto.

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    2. 1. This wasn't my question. The question is about the analogy between ecologists and economists. Ecologists say that an ecosystem is working, even when it includes a predator-prey crash. Economists say that markets are working, UNLESS there is a crash (except for the Austrians). The statement that "markets are good" is a contingent norm for mainstream economists, not a naturalistic assumption.

      2. Not likely. As a matter of empirical finding, Piketty has shown that the postwar interregnum in inequality was an anomaly. It was going on for a century or more before, and the trend has been widening over the last 30-40 years. In addition, we have strong theoretical indications that "secular demand stagnation" is a trend coming out of globalization and automation, because the remaining possibility for dislocated labor (service jobs; baristas, personal trainers) will tend to be kinds of work which, however much fun, cannot lead to increasing incomes because the personal work does not admit the same intensity in productivity gains as machines. You can only handcraft so many lattes an hour. General equilibrium theory has nothing to do with it.

      --Again, let me rephrase my point #2 in this way, and maybe it will be clearer: Let's hypothesize that capitalism leads to an end state of pure communism: intellectual machines will do all the necessary work, and people will free to do fun work, personal work, work that does not require continuous productivity improvements to be market-competitive, because there is no market. First question: If the secular stagnation we see now is an early harbinger of the trend toward pure communism, then is secular stagnation good or bad? Is the system working now, or is it not?

      Let's say your answer is, "Pure communism is never going to happen, and what the system is doing now, is bad."

      But then, question 2: Wait a minute, what are your reasons for claiming that what your answer is a "naturalistic assumption"? Ray Lopez: "there's no way you can tell if today's bad trend will continue or not." Nope, this won't cut it. What is the theory, the empirics which prove your belief to be naturalistic?

      3. No again, our psychology does not apply to the past. You have made the common error of assuming that today's psychological expectations have been for all time. Medieval scribes and rulers were sometimes greedy, but that was completely outside the acceptable norm. And the further idea that every individual has the RIGHT to exercise self-interest to ascend in life was unthinkable before the 17th century, and did not blossom before the rise of social evolutionism/Romanticism in the late 18th. People wouldn't have known what you were talking about. In fact, the idea of an "individual" didn't exist. This is a modern invention.

      Again, the reason why I raised this here, is the question of whether "utility maximization" can be taken to be a "naturalistic assumption" that supports the statement, "markets are good." IF utility maximization might also include altruistic sacrifice (as certainly it did; originally, to maintain one's place in the Great Chain of Being, and to help others to maintain their place so that the cosmos didn't collapse, or whatever), and this was the natural psychology for thousands of years, THEN modern economics cannot regard markets as a naturalistic assumption, because they rely only on self-interest and voluntary exchange, and do not work by one-way altruism and sacrifice. So economics is only half a science, and therefore "naturalistic" is not the correct adjective, perhaps "half-naturalistic" or "illusorily naturalistic."

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    3. Note, by the way, how in the erroneous application of "spontaneous order" (Hayek), Austrian economics has adopted the approach of ecosystems ecologists to the economy, without knowing that ecology has rejected the notion of an overriding spontaneous order that explains how ecosystems work. Even more curiously, though, in an inversion of the rule, there are natural scientists who make the mistake of thinking that the economy is some sort of delicate spontaneous order which their own discipline must make adjustments to accommodate, or else the economy will forfeit: e.g. Daniel Botkin in ecology, Richard Lindzen in climatology...

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  14. Jose Romeu Robazzi6:29 AM

    Noah, thank you for recognizing that bits of austrian thinkers ideas "have been incorporated into mainstream economics". Unfortunately, that has been very little. Is that was so, people would be saying that Mises-Hayek type cycle is happening right now, with slow wage growth, and the diconnect between earlier stages goods prices (commodities) and later stages goods prices (services and consumer goods). There is a lot of quantitative work that can be connected to the austrian views, people just don't mention it, because the leftist sci jackers will mock them, in blog posts like yours ...

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  15. Actually, economics has fallen to sci-jacking:

    Priceless: How The Federal Reserve Bought The Economics Profession
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/07/priceless-how-the-federal_n_278805.html

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    1. Well, the Fed is not a very politicized organization, whatever the trolls say, and it certainly isn't a political *movement*.

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    2. But you do agree with the article that the Fed bought the economics profession?

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  16. Economics has avoided being captured so far because it is far too important to be captured. Each attempt is being countered by 'the other side', so that both sides are equally strong. Remember, social scientists as a whole lean heavily to the left: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/10/only-six-percent-of-scien_n_229382.html
    Since natural sciences are unideological, the possible effect of ideological politics on science can only be measured by the social sciences, and economics is the outlier among them. It seems to me that reality, indeed, has a 'liberal bias', but economics is to the right of the educated public because some moneyed interests keep it that way. Plus, economics is very often also politics, and people don't necessarily prefer the economics that economists suggest to them, for whatever reason. This can be exploited, and in many countries macroeconomics has been tilted to the right lately. Leftist ideas are usually only applied immediately after a crash, and then the moneyed interests work hard in repealing or subverting them, i.e. the fight against Dodd-Frank, abuse of too-big-to-fail, record spending for republicans and so on... So not only is the science of economics to the right of other sciences, but its application is even further to the right.

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  17. Anonymous11:38 AM

    Setting up an anthropology straw man to hide the right-wing domination of econ? Weak tea. Right-wing sci-jackers utterly dominate elite policy circles and social circles. Krugman, Piketty, and Stiglitz (Sachs is a closet Austrian) may be the "face of economics" to academic departments, but they're not taken seriously by anyone who matters.

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    1. Right-wing sci-jackers utterly dominate elite policy circles and social circles.

      That may be true, but it's not the case in academia. The people spouting politicized bullshit into the receptive ears of politicians are, in general, not economists.

      Delete
  18. Economics cannot be sci-jacked because it *is* sci-jacking. It is a political project designed to reinforce the status quo by masquerading as a science.

    Consider a science whose goal is to publish papers on exactly how much fertilizer to apply to a corn field, when to apply the fertilizer, where to apply it, etc. It is never questioned whether there is another, better way to grow the corn besides fertilizer, or whether another crop should be grown, or why we are growing corn at all.

    Even the questions economics asks and the assumptions it makes are political. It is designed to make sure people are unable to think outside the system by claiming a priori, that the system we have is the only one imaginable. The underlying assumptions it makes - materialism and productivism for example, are never to be questioned. The role of compulsion and violence in the system is also hushed up and deliberately ignored in favor of a mythical system of "voluntary" exchanges in "free" markets (which are never free).

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  19. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. Where did any of this exchange happen? It's news to me!

      Delete
    2. I was more poking fun at your apparent approval of what you call sealioning, which I don't really see why it's something to be avoided.

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    3. stealioning2:15 PM

      The inflation rate in Brazil was recorded at 6.41 percent in December of 2014. Inflation Rate in Brazil averaged 388.97 percent from 1980 until 2014, reaching an all time high of 6821.31 percent in April of 1990 and a record low of 1.65 percent in December of 1998. Inflation Rate in Brazil is reported by the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE)12 gener de 2015, 10:43
      The inflation rate in Russia was recorded at 11.40 percent in December of 2014. Inflation Rate in Russia averaged 143.16 percent from 1991 until 2014, reaching an all time high of 2333.30 percent in December of 1992 and a record low of 3.60 percent in April of 2012. Inflation Rate in Russia is reported by the Federal State Statistics Service

      The inflation rate in Egypt was recorded at 10.13 percent in December of 2014. Inflation Rate in Egypt averaged 8.93 percent from 1958 until 2014, reaching an all time high of 35.10 percent in June of 1986 and a record low of -4.20 percent in August of 1962. Inflation Rate in Egypt is reported by the Central Bank of Egypt.

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  20. But damn, I'm just really annoyed by the idea that we've got to use This Method over That Method, because if we use That Method we won't help The Poors as much, or whatever. First of all it's not even right. Second of all I think society needs a bunch of smart people who just concentrate on figuring out what is going on, as best they can, without worrying about what to do about it all. I think that having that bunch of people has served us well in the past and will continue to serve us well in the future, and that replacing it with a bunch of political activists who see every positive result through a normative lens would represent humanity shooting itself in the foot.

    ---------------
    agree. The data and optimal utilization based on this data is what matters, not being married to some ideology.

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    1. Anonymous12:10 AM

      Optimal utilization is determined by religion, or whatever bullshit people call their "values", so it is not that simple.

      Delete
  21. Eric Titus11:58 PM

    A few thoughts:
    1) An idea being political doesn't make it wrong. The "sci-jacking" of sociology has produced some great work on race and gender discrimination. Research that I would say matches in its sophistication any research elsewhere in the social sciences.

    2) At the same time, the "politically neutral" field of economics was busy trying to come up with alternative explanations for discrimination. I am not trying to say that there wasn't flimsy, demagogic work in sociology. But at the same time the "apolitical" research in economics produced a lot of terrible work as well!

    3) In an area I know fairly well, research on low-wage work, economics has little to say about some of the most interesting trends in the US (the growth of part-time work, subcontracting, total quality management). Most of the good work in these areas has come from (left-leaning) sociologists. But it is awfully convenient that "apolitical" economics managed to avoid such a touchy area.

    4) Similarly, some of the innovations in this area (search models, neomonopsony theory, etc) were made by researchers with strong politics.

    I do think that the politicization of the other social sciences can be an issue, and it can lead to work not receiving the scrutiny that it deserves. But there's plenty of good work being produced that is not politically motivated, and there's even a lot of good, rigorous, politically engaged work. Being apolitical doesn't make an approach right, and being political doesn't mean shabby work is being produced!

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    1. Anonymous12:13 AM

      I am inclined to agree. I think the biggest problem is people concealing their politics inside their policy recommendations, and approach that is dangerously abundant at think tanks much more so than academia.

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  22. Surely the duke page you point to could be repurposed for economics with some trivial editing?

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  23. gmorejon4:55 PM

    My experience may have been special -- I got an econ degree at FSU as a dare -- but I had many profs who claimed to be apolitical. One had work ed for Reagan, one had a tatoo of an AK-47 and hated gubment, one had a giant picture of a ferengi on his office door, the chair believed oxfam interfered with markets and was thus bad. So, forgive me if I find it hard to believe that econ "resists" politicization.

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    1. FSU is a special case, as is GMU, since these departments are heavily funded by the Kochs.

      Delete
    2. gmorejon9:32 PM

      Maybe FSU is special, but there were a number of wealthy right-wingers paying for faculty well before the Kochs. The Kochs just have national name recogition. I doubt this is all that rare, and I doubt there are a whole lot (or any) billionaire communists out there to balance things out.

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  24. It seems to me praxeology is an attempt to make economics similar to geometry. Some features of human nature are stated as axioms (self-evident truths). Deductive reasoning is used to derive results. Some proponents go farther to argue for the use of law to create a specific type of political-economic system.

    But are there axioms which are truly self-evident? Are there laws of economics, such as the conservation of momentum, which are based on definitions and measurements independent of the varieties of human culture being observed? Economics is a branch of anthropology. In society, causes are moral, so outcomes evaluated as good or bad must look at the structure of human customs and infer a moral cause.

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    1. No. Geometry has content. Praxeology does not.

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    2. gamorejon9:39 PM

      I've always wondered what true believers of praxeology think about Goedel.

      Delete
    3. Apparently the word "content" has some special meaning to you. The question is whether the axioms are in fact self-evident truths, and whether the theorems follow from the axioms. In geometry, generally yes, in praxeology, generally no. The human mind appears to have a nearly universal tendency to accept geometry as a coherent body of knowledge, but it does not appear to have a universal tendency to accept praxeology or orthodox economics as a coherent body of knowledge.

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    4. gamorejon,

      For what it is worth, Hayek wrote favorably about Goedel, although arguably he was not a "true believer in praxeology," with that being a matter of some serious dispute among Austrian economists.

      Delete
  25. The conservative scijackers seem to me to have lost the physics property of charm too.

    They aren't the coolest bunch.

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  26. The Chris Blattman link is to stumbling and mumbling and I could not see on it any further links to anything by C Blattman.

    First do the numbers and then from the numbers do policy or first do the policy and then ignore the numbers or make the numbers best fit to the policy. Objectivity is in the former but not the latter method. "Science" is in the former but "politics" in the latter. In your b article the latter I think was said to lead to mistakes. It would be an illustration of the baneful effects of sci-jacking.

    Example could be ignoring standard analysts like the Atlanta Fed who are numbers men. They give the reasons and numbers on decline in Labour Force Participation but are ignored by some because it does not fit the presentation that there are no such persons as baby boomers impacting on the rate. Policy mistakes by ignoring such numbers men are inevitable.

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    1. Doing the numbers requires a model. The model is derived as a deduction from some stated axioms or as an abstraction from observed social customs. In any case an economist must be an anthropologist operating within a specialty. Efforts to be objective are necessary yet impossible because the model is a bias which may be a poor fit for the underlying reality. Economists do not have models independent of assumptions about human nature or observations of human culture with significant abstraction from the complex political-economy.

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  27. Anonymous4:28 AM

    " but economists, in the main, seem to have done an admirable job of staying as politically neutral as humanly possible."

    You either mean this in which case you are an epic idiot or the biggest troll of all time! Either way I nearly died laughing so that can't be bad :-)

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  28. John S6:09 PM

    George Selgin's response to your 9-11 Brain Worm piece. Thoughts?

    http://www.freebanking.org/2015/01/11/something-nice-about-austrian-economics/

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  29. Hi,
    The "complimentary" piece in your update has been posted by a certain Chris Dillow and NOT Chris Blattman. Just wanted to point that out.
    Dillow's bio is here: http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2005/11/the_normblog_pr_1.html

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  30. John S8:15 AM

    I thought it was funny that Boettke cited Elinor Ostrom... and Vernon Smith, who did the original Bubble Experiments, as "more market oriented thinkers".

    Smith sounds pretty market oriented here, wouldn't you agree?

    [ From "Please, No More Government Spending!" by Vernon Smith, The Daily Beast, July 19, 2010 ]

    "Our best shot at increasing employment and output is to reduce business taxes and the cost of creating new start-up companies. Don’t subsidize them; just reduce their taxes even as they become larger; also reduce any unnecessary impediments to their formation."

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  31. The low cost of capital we (the US govt) face, decoupled from the ability to deliver significant value to citizens, insufficiently incentivizes public sector prudence. From this follows the current political dynamics on the right - a plutocratic GOP focused on using prudence rhetorically as a means to advance an aggressive austerity. It has become difficult for anyone on the right to deliver an argument that the prescriptive value of a social program exceeds its cost in the face of an ideology that dismisses any and all government programs as worthless or at best less efficient than their private sector equivalent - thus the policy ideas and theoretical contributions have suffered greatly. Charter schools and other such experimental methods introducing choice to help reform bureaucracies are promising but about all I can think of for positives.

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  32. Noah: "This is natural, since the right wants free markets (well, in most ways), and econ treats free markets as natural outcomes."

    No, the right wants money and hierarchy, and doesn't give a flying f*ck about free markets, save as those get them what they want.

    Look on the right, and see just how much they love government money, and government rules which protect their interest.

    As for 'sci-jacking', the idea that free markets are natural outcomes is a huge political thing, and that's on top of the idea that something 'natural' is to be preferred.


    Here's a question - it's not honestly deniable by any informed expert that austerity was damaging.
    If the austerians had had their way six years ago, we might not be talking about the '*Lesser* Depression'.

    And the combination of US austerity with EU austerity might have produced some horrors on a scale with the 20th century. A while back, a professor (Lucas? Conchrane? ) commented that people would openly gigle back in the early 80's when somebody presented Keynesian work.

    Who has been giggling at Lucas and Cochane when they present work?

    Who calls 'liar!' at the inflationistas?

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  33. Anonymous9:11 PM

    Noah,

    As usual this is a thought provoking post.

    I've always found the popularity of "Austrian" econ a bit peculiar. I can't think of any other fringe group of scholars from another discipline that have so many lay enthusiasts among bloggers, commenters and in the think tank certain. In my own discipline, sociology, we have various marxists, feminists and even post-modern schools of thought that lie at the fringes of the discipline but they don't have a large fanbase (for want of a better term) outside of academia.

    With that being said, I think its important to differentiate the modal internet "Austrian" from an academic "Austrian". So far as I can tell, the econ and related blogosphere is full of ostensibly "Austrian" bloggers and commenters who have only a slight familiarity with Austrian theory and almost no knowledge of the rest of social science.

    I think there is some value is having odd-ball, outlier, fringe, heterodox or (insert other adjective) schools of thought within a discipline. I don't tend to find myself in full-on agreement with some of the Marxist and Feminist authors that I've read, but I think I'm better off for engaging with their ideas.

    "Austrian Econ", as you and I both understand it, is basically against empirical analysis in favor of logical deduction. I find it really hard to have a conversation or even begin to seriously engage with these types of schools of thought. It reminds me, to some extent, of ethnomethodology or post-modernism. Unlike other fringe or outlier ways of thinking I don't find any value in those schools (at least for my purposes).

    You are correct in that sociology has succumbed to left-wing activism. For my PhD I was given the choice of forming a human shield around a planned parenthood facility or starting a community garden in a poor neighborhood. Instead, I choose to form a human shield around some non-GMO beets that guerilla gardeners had planted in an office park as a way of reclaiming public space from neoliberalism. Thank god sociologists don't have to do research, publish books and papers, attend conferences or teach classes.

    Of course that last paragraph is trolling, but I think your characterizations of of sociology (or really anything other than econ) is a bit silly. Your alma mater has a particularity strong sociology program- maybe you can walk down the hall to see what they are doing in the soc dept if you ever go back for a visit.

    Thanks again for the post!

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  34. Although attention has moved away from Hayek and Laffer, and toward Krugman and Stiglitz, it does not follow that economics has started to lean left. The deregulation and tax cuts advocated by the conservatives were implemented almost exactly as prescribed, and the results were almost the exact opposite of the conservative predictions.

    The Austrians responded to the observations by banishing economic models from their textbooks, and insisting that the economy is so complex that it cannot be measured, (or even understood) by non-Austrians. While DeLong and Thoma (etc.) have tried to wallpaper their blogs with graphs, the pronouncements of the Mises Institute increasingly resemble a newsletter from a cult: They praise those who repeat their sacred Catechism, and shun those who fall outside the faith.

    When Communism failed, the far-left school of economics moved back to the center: Instead of advocating government control of goods and services, they now advocate bank regulation and Pigovian taxes.

    But when the far-right school of economics failed, they simply moved further out. Instead of advocating (yet) more tax cuts and deregulation, they now advocate eliminating the social safety net and voting rights.

    The only surprising thing is that the national discussion has been moved so far to the right that these now seem like mainstream ideas. In the 1960's it was an article of faith that the minimum wage created jobs. Today, even NPR blandly asserts that a minimum wage hike will "cost" jobs. Like other parts of the Mises doctrine, it has been repeated so many times that it is now accepted without proof. When Robert Reich or Dean Baker raise their hand to disagree, the media demands proof.

    And it hardly matters how much proof they provide: Their economic models are dismissed as "left-leaning liberal elite soy-latte Communism" by people who wouldn't know an economic model from a model railroad.

    When I studied economics (back when Adam Smith was just "That Scottish kid") it was commonly accepted that the middle class created jobs. If I try to mention this in a meeting, I am shouted down by people who literally believe the phrase "job creators".

    Have I moved left, or did everyone else move right?

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  35. "Now, there are some self-described Austrians who do not perfectly fit the description above - they have partially embraced the methods of mainstream economics. But this seems like saying that because not all self-described communists believe in pure orthodox Marxism, communism is no longer to be identified with Marxism. "Austrians for mainstream economic methods" sounds to me a little bit like "Jews for Jesus."

    This is a very poor analogy. It amounts to treating the hacks as the "real thing," and real economists who deserve more respectable consideration, from Mises and Hayek themselves (and their predecessors from Menger onwards, for that matter) as the "deviants" from the Austrian School.

    I suppose you can blame these actual scholars for the fact that the school, unlike most others, has a huge popular following, and one that's all too ready to play economist on the internet and elsewhere. But really, suppose every Noah Smith fan started calling himself a Noah-Smithian and blogging all sorts of sketchy pseudo pseudo-Noahpinion stuff about how big government is just oh so groovy, in allcaps and such. Would you be happy to have people start calling them the "Real" Noahs, and calling you a "deviant"? I think not!

    So how about stopping this business of tarring the whole Austrian School, which has a long and very fine tradition behind it, with that big sloppy brush of yours, and stick to referring your complaints to specific self-styled Austrians or websites or whatever. You may then be surprised to see how many real Austrians agree with at least some of your criticisms.

    And read more Vernon Smith while your at it: he's a huge Hayek fan and very keen on free markets.

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    1. But the term free markets is an oxymoron. If the purpose of law is to expand freedom (See Endnote 1, page 24, http://www.biologyoflaw.org/Purpose/PurposeLaw.pdf) then the economic problem of regulated markets is clearly rooted in customs of law, accounting, and politics.

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  36. One other point, then I'll shut-up: the "stupid-internet-Austrian" view that economics is all deduction and no empirical stuff is a misreading of Mises, who actually used "economics" to mean what most economists nowadays mean by "economic theory," lumping what most people nowadays call "applied economics" into what he called "history." So, Hey Presto! "Economics" is all deduction. In fact Mises' thinking was no different from that of many modern economists. Indeed, I can think of quite a few of the latter (New Classical types, mainly) whose a-priorism goes a lot further than Mises' ever did. (The man knew his economic history pretty well after all, though he had not a shred of patience for the merest sort of statistics, let alone what we call econometrics.)

    So, again, when Boettke and other non-stupid-internet-Austrians do empirical work, they aren't deviating from anything. They have their Austrian economics right. The ultra-praxeologist wannabes who claim that empirical evidence is of no account don't.

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